Wednesday, January 15, 2014

Carlos Lopez Cantera taking Toxic Job. By Geniusofdespair

I know he is a a Republican but I sincerely like Carlos Lopez Cantera and think he has been a stellar Property Appraiser. But I think his days are numbered with Rick Scott. I do not think Rick has a chance in hell of being reelected and that would leave Carlos out in the cold. Talk about hooking an albatross around your neck, Carlos has one now.

30 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I totally agree and thought the same from the moment I heard he news. It may be a vesting thing, though. These former state reps have incredible retirement benefits. He gets some time under his belt at the higher Lt Gov. pay scale and fattens up his state retirement package. Not bad to be 40 and know that in the future some nice state money is coming your way. His departure is a huge loss for those in Miami Dade who pay real property taxes. He was not willing to placate the BCC by increasing assessments for the sake of increasing the availibility of money for those clowns to use. It will be intersting to see if the suit he started to establish the autonomy of the property assessor will continue. Those waiting in the wings to win the seat pretty much SUCK.

It’s easy to find home- and land-owner information on the website of Miami-Dade’s Property Appraiser, with a notable exception: the house where the county’s elected property appraiser lives.

Details about Property Appraiser Carlos Lopez-Cantera’s home value and taxes are simply impossible to find with his website’s search engine. That makes him an exception in South Florida.

Lopez-Cantera would not comment. One friend of Lopez-Cantera’s, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said the information was hidden after a threatening person showed up at his Coral Gables door after his 2012 election.

The Miami Herald accidentally discovered the issue Monday while researching Lopez-Cantera amid word that Gov. Rick Scott plans to tap him Tuesday to fill the long-vacant post of lieutenant governor.

Scott’s Naples home information, incidentally, is available on the Collier County property appraiser’s site, which shows it has a market value of more than $13.1 million.

One of Lopez-Cantera’s peers, Broward County Property Appraiser Lori Parrish, was surprised to hear that he had hid his home information because she knows him as a “straight shooter, an honest guy.”

“I don’t think it’s right to keep this information from the public like this,” Parrish said. “People need to see how we’re appraising our own homes just like the homes of everyone else.”

Not everyone’s information is available on the appraiser’s website. The home addresses of criminal and child-welfare investigators, police, firefighters, judges and government-revenue collectors are exempt under Florida law.

Parrish said that, because her husband is a criminal-court judge, she could have exempted her home information. But she said she decided not to in the interest of full disclosure.

Other property appraisers, she pointed out, make their properties easy to locate on the web along with nearly every other citizen’s home and land.

Even though Lopez-Cantera’s home information is nearly impossible to find, it doesn’t mean that he broke public-records laws, Parrish said, because the property appraiser’s website is offered as a courtesy to the public, not as a right mandated by Florida statute.

Barbara Petersen, an open-records advocate who works for the news-media-funded First Amendment Foundation in Tallahassee, agreed that the website might be a courtesy. But she said Lopez-Cantera should post his information.

“This violates the spirit of open public records and the public’s right to know,” Petersen said, noting other politicians’ homes and property information are available.

One exception: Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, whose home address is exempted from public record because he was once a firefighter.

Lopez-Cantera, of Coral Gables, has a track record of seeking to lower property values, thus reducing property taxes, and has a positive image in a county with a reputation for political chicanery. But he's virtually unknown outside of Miami-Dade.

He served in the House from 2004 to 2012, the last two years as majority leader and had only write-in opposition in 2008 and 2010. He narrowly defeated Pedro Garcia in a county-wide nonpartisan primary in 2012 to become Miami-Dade's second elected appraiser.

Lopez-Cantera is also part of the inner circle of U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who defeated Crist in 2010 and who served as state House speaker when Lopez-Cantera was a state representative.

Term-limited in the House, where he was known by his initials, "CLC," Lopez-Cantera ran for property appraiser after Garcia tried to levy property taxes on the city of Miami's four parking garages at the Miami Marlins' new ballpark.

Lopez-Cantera had pulled strings for a legislative fix in Tallahassee that exempted the city from a tax levy of up to $1.2 million a year, even though a House staff report said that might be unconstitutional.

He renovated the property appraiser's offices on the seventh floor of County Hall to make the desks appear more open and inviting in a bid to be more customer-friendly. He has also stepped up enforcement of homestead exemption fraud.

He disappointed Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez's administration by growing property values only slightly, keeping taxes low for homeowners but bringing in less money to fund county services. He has sued the county in a dispute over the powers of his office and clashed with labor unions over a union rep's pay, prompting the union to successfully file an unfair labor practice complaint over his practice of paying for monthly birthday cakes for employees from an employee fund set up without union consent.

A state hearing officer ruled in the union's favor in December.

Union leaders have accused Lopez-Cantera of being anti-labor because he tried to fire an employee who wasn't showing up to work despite making more than $86,000 a year. The employee is a publicly funded union representative excused full time from work duties.

Married with two young daughters, Lopez-Cantera was born in Madrid and raised in Miami. He attended the elite Gulliver Preparatory School, graduated from Miami Palmetto Senior High and the University of Miami. His wife Renee works in the circulation department at the Miami Herald.

As property appraiser, he is paid $167,567 a year. The salary for lieutenant governor is $120,000.

Lopez-Cantera is independently wealthy and last year reported a net worth of $2.3 million, much of it from family companies, Pan American Consulting and Pan American Group, which develop and manage commercial and industrial property. He also has earned substantial income from Imagine Outdoor Advertising, a billboard company.

To the first anon, CLC doesn't need state money for retirement. It's interesting he accepted but who wouldn't? He's young and energetic which will counter Scott's weirdo look. It was a very smart move on the GOP front because even Rubio translated north of the I-4 corridor as they say in FL politics. I wouldn't be so quick to throw Scott to the curb where he needs to go. This move is going to split the largest Hispanic vote in the State where the Dem's thought they were locking it up outside of the old Cuban guard. This is a game changer for the race. It will be interesting to see where Crist is polling in a few weeks agains this new ticket. CLC would probably make a decent Governor down the road as I believe he's been a huge improvement since Pedro Garcia. However, we have lost a real trouper when it comes to the property appraisers office. If Zapata or someone like him runs, expect more one cow property's not paying taxes on 100's of acres zoned industrial or commercial. That's the old game they play until land can be re zoned, subdivided and the separate parcels taxed. Where screwed locally with what could be inflated property values for homeowners while the land bankers pay zero. That's was CLC prevented and was good at it.

Carlos Lopez-Cantera could have kept getting $167,567 per year at the County for years. Not bad for a 40 year old. Plus, he could have gotten a County pension. I thought when he ran he promised to stay as Property Appraiser for 2-3 terms, maybe more. This flip looks bad.

Given this fact, they need to give new people some statewide visibility while they still have a chance. Democrats on the other hand, eat their young fearing they will do better than them, and never seem to identify, promote or encourage people with promise and real leadership potential. The result is we have these same non-producing, non-visionary people in office, no one being groomed for success, and a very weak bench. The kind of people we need are not running to get in line to be a public official, in fact, they understand the responsibilities and the burden of leadership. They have to be identified and encouraged. So, this is their opportunity to introduce him to the state. in the meantime, if something happens to Scott between now and the election, we will have our first Hispanic governor.

Carlos left Miami-Dade because, with the exception of Xavier Suarez and Javier Souto, the BCC is sold out to lobbyists and the unions. Carlos Gimenez opposed everything CLC tried to do.

CLC was the hope of many for bringing about change I the County. He is smart, CLEAN , dedicated and a very hard worker. He was the hope of many for the next County Mayor. Alas, it was not to be. He will help Scott win and will be an excellent governor himself in five years

Cava is smart enough to control her own campaign. That election is a street fight for the numbers, and she has lots of street warriors to bring in the numbers. As long as she stays focused on the numbers, she will be OK. Everything else is BS. Her attention should be focused solely on her election day machinery, her early voting machinery, and her absentee ballot voting machinery. Anything that does not fit into those operations is a waste of time and resources.

Both parties need to be more aggressive in getting more talented women to run for public office. Too bad he did not put another woman there. I am glad Cava felt the calling. Thinking women are needed in elected positions now more than ever. Given the fact that we are preparing to elect Clinton as our first woman President, you would think they would have figured out that a woman in that position would be more useful. But republican women have been systematically suppressed, walked on, and looked over throughout the history of the party. That is why Clinton will get many cross-over republican women votes.

Above Anon:Many women would like to run for office. Here's what has happened to two close friends of mine: they were immediately bombarded by pro-abortion and homosexual groups. When they politely responded that they did not agree, they received threats, hate-mail and in one of the two cases, her children were so bullied that she had to remove them from their school. These happened in California and Phoenix.

Women will have to learn to fight back. When laws are broken, law enforcement should be called in and these people arrested. Let's look at the facts. Women represent more than half of the population, more than half of the registered voters, and more than half of the frequent voters. If all things were equal, you would expect they would represent more than half of the US House of Representatives, more than half of the US Senate, more than half of the state legislatures, and more than half of the governorships. Only now, after all these years are we getting our first woman President. There is a big imbalance in our government, where a minority is severely over represented in governmental decision-making. That is why we continually have all these problems. Pissing contests are regular pastimes of the minority group in power. Hopefully women will begin to understand that the vast majority of these seats they should hold and begin to run in earnest.

About your campaign and your slogan, "No property tax!", you may recall that's been tried recently.

Marco Rubio tried to eliminate property taxes stating they only burden home owners and instead raise the sales tax (excluding food as it is now). That would require everyone, including tourists to share the burden. It didn't fly. Counties, primarily Miami-Dade County, put up unbeatable opposition.

Anon earlier, those women should have immediately given those threats and hate-mail to the FBI if it was a federal election, or to local law enforcement for state or local races. School officials should have been notified of the school situation and should have handled it.

FYI: those women did all of the above. They won. Without having to compromise their positions on abortion or marriage. One is a judge; the other sits on her school board. My post was about extremist left-wing coercion from "women's groups" perpetrated on right-wing women candidates.

What is Lopez Cantera environmental record? Is he a climate change denier like Scott, Gimenez and Rubio? For Florida's future, we need people who understand and follow through on protecting Florida's natural resources (remember environment is the economy) and also will be global leaders on Climate Change/Renewable energy issues. Don't believe Lopez Cantera fits the bill. Otherwise the Tea Party Florida GOP wouldn't be behind him.

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